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Weber State LJiiiXEn?:siTY EES EEQ rsinZI TrD-EE cHZn ik. D fsl EEZX April 1 0, 1 998 - April 1 6, 1 998 By Mellyn L Cole managing editor -The Signpost oca's Oldest N nuclear Waste The Cotter Concentrate... on the long road to a new resting place-in our own backyard... v N at orman Begay and his wife, Shirley, were driving tneir pickup truck outside Shiprock, N .M . , Feb .21, when a second vehicle approached them from behind, rammed into the back of their truck and rolled it off the road. The Begays were killed instantly. No more information about the death of the couple is available because the accident is still under investigation. Mary Ann Bronson, a close friend of the Begays, said many of the couple's friends and family members believe the rollover may not have been accidental. "We wondered about that, and we still do because lots of things like that happen on the reservation," Bronson said. Norman Begay's eulogy, delivered in front of 1 ,000 people, compared him to Martin Luther , King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln and the apostle Peter. "Peter was outspoken, and because of the crusade in which he believed, he was disliked by some people to the extent that he eventually lost his life for what he believed in," Stanley Bronson said in the eulogy. The cause Norman Begay believed in was environmental safety, and the stand he took was against x. e-the Denver-based company Energy Fuels Nuclear. Last summer, the company hauled 400 tons of radioactive material into Blanding, a small town in southeastern Utah. Its plan is to make a profit by reprocessing the residue to remove the remaining ura- nium. The leftovers will be dumped in a tailings pond behind the White Mesa Uranium Mill. Energy Fuels Nuclear and state officials say neither the material, nor its waste products are dangerous despite the fact that it has been shuffled around the United States for the last 50 years leaving behind it a path of toxic nuclear cleanup sites. Concentrate once St. Louis' problem Originally, the waste was created by Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, a St. Louis plant hired by the U.S. government to produce uranium oxide a material critical to the development of the atomic bomb. Because Mallinckrodt used 60 to 65 percent pure uranium ore as a starting material, the resulting waste was highly radioactive. Since the waste material in Blanding is still 10 percent pure, it may be emitting harmful particles that can be inhaled or swallowed, causing, among other things, cancer. Kay Drey from the Missouri Coalition for the Environment said it is this fact that makes the residue so dangerous. According to Drey, one government study ranks Uranium-235 byproducts among its "Group 8" elements, Author's note: Enough radioactive material to create a bomb that's what's scheduled to pass through Ogden in June, according to an article in Monday's "Standard-Examiner."It will be the first of two different shipments of foreign nuclear waste passing through Ogden this summer on its way to a storage site at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Lab. According to the article, state officials are not concerned about the transportation of this material through Utah. It's a common occurrence, and any past accidents have been of minor consequence. Although some would argue with that statement, Utah is no stranger to nuclear waste. For nearly a year now, our state has played host to the oldest nuclear waste on earth. It's a bizarre story that sounds more like fiction than fact. VP See Waste page 2

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Weber State LJiiiXEn?:siTY EES EEQ rsinZI TrD-EE cHZn ik. D fsl EEZX April 1 0, 1 998 - April 1 6, 1 998 By Mellyn L Cole managing editor -The Signpost oca's Oldest N nuclear Waste The Cotter Concentrate... on the long road to a new resting place-in our own backyard... v N at orman Begay and his wife, Shirley, were driving tneir pickup truck outside Shiprock, N .M . , Feb .21, when a second vehicle approached them from behind, rammed into the back of their truck and rolled it off the road. The Begays were killed instantly. No more information about the death of the couple is available because the accident is still under investigation. Mary Ann Bronson, a close friend of the Begays, said many of the couple's friends and family members believe the rollover may not have been accidental. "We wondered about that, and we still do because lots of things like that happen on the reservation," Bronson said. Norman Begay's eulogy, delivered in front of 1 ,000 people, compared him to Martin Luther , King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln and the apostle Peter. "Peter was outspoken, and because of the crusade in which he believed, he was disliked by some people to the extent that he eventually lost his life for what he believed in," Stanley Bronson said in the eulogy. The cause Norman Begay believed in was environmental safety, and the stand he took was against x. e-the Denver-based company Energy Fuels Nuclear. Last summer, the company hauled 400 tons of radioactive material into Blanding, a small town in southeastern Utah. Its plan is to make a profit by reprocessing the residue to remove the remaining ura- nium. The leftovers will be dumped in a tailings pond behind the White Mesa Uranium Mill. Energy Fuels Nuclear and state officials say neither the material, nor its waste products are dangerous despite the fact that it has been shuffled around the United States for the last 50 years leaving behind it a path of toxic nuclear cleanup sites. Concentrate once St. Louis' problem Originally, the waste was created by Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, a St. Louis plant hired by the U.S. government to produce uranium oxide a material critical to the development of the atomic bomb. Because Mallinckrodt used 60 to 65 percent pure uranium ore as a starting material, the resulting waste was highly radioactive. Since the waste material in Blanding is still 10 percent pure, it may be emitting harmful particles that can be inhaled or swallowed, causing, among other things, cancer. Kay Drey from the Missouri Coalition for the Environment said it is this fact that makes the residue so dangerous. According to Drey, one government study ranks Uranium-235 byproducts among its "Group 8" elements, Author's note: Enough radioactive material to create a bomb that's what's scheduled to pass through Ogden in June, according to an article in Monday's "Standard-Examiner."It will be the first of two different shipments of foreign nuclear waste passing through Ogden this summer on its way to a storage site at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Lab. According to the article, state officials are not concerned about the transportation of this material through Utah. It's a common occurrence, and any past accidents have been of minor consequence. Although some would argue with that statement, Utah is no stranger to nuclear waste. For nearly a year now, our state has played host to the oldest nuclear waste on earth. It's a bizarre story that sounds more like fiction than fact. VP See Waste page 2